Manny Ramirez: Baseball's Most Innovative Player

Manny Ramirez and his dreadlocks have a lock on L.A. Dodgers' fans' hearts and minds, and are a shoo-in for the Baseball Hall of Fame. But I'd like to nominate him for one more honor: Baseball's MIP--Most Innovative Player.

No joke. I take quite seriously the meaning of innovation in its truest form--something that fundamentally changes the way people live, work, and play. For example, adding a button to a cell phone isn't innovation. But if that button turns the cell phone into a camera and that camera changes the way people record their lives and communicate with each other, then that extra button becomes innovation.

So I'm not talking about Manny's batting average or home run tally when I say he's an innovator. It's much deeper than that. What makes Manny Ramirez the most innovative player in baseball? His sense of play. Manny Ramirez has brought fun back to America's pastime and by doing that, he's changed Dodgers baseball, whether he meant to or not.

You see it in his trademark dreadlocks, now replicated on souvenir Dodgers caps. You see it in the reports of teammates grooving to Manny's salsa in the locker room, despite the Dodgers' ban on music in the club house. And in the way the Dodgers sold 20,000 extra tickets in a matter of hours when the fans heard that the slugger was on his way to Southern California.

Serious Fun

You can never underestimate how important fun is to innovation. I definitely do my best creative thinking while mountain biking or surfing, and we all know that Ben Franklin discovered the source of lightning by flying a kite. If it weren't for Steve Jobs taking a calligraphy class decades ago--right after dropping out of college--we probably wouldn't have a choice of fonts on our personal computers today. Likewise, when a couple of University of Southern California students first conceived a way to connect with their favorite bands, for fun, little did they know their notion would turn into MySpace, attract a quarter of a billion users and redefine how the Internet is used to connect people with each other.

In most workplaces, it can be easy to dismiss the element of fun because we're focused on serious stuff. But in 1948, Swiss mountaineer George de Mestral hit the trail and noticed the burrs stuck to his dog's coat. He looked at the burrs under a microscope, and that's when his idea struck. People laughed and thought it was silly. But he ignored the skeptics and invented a new two-sided fastener, Velcro.

But in business, we focus on profits and losses. In school these days, we emphasize scores more than creative activities. Before Manny, it was all about the Dodgers' mediocre statistics this season. Inject a little "Manny being Manny" and it's a whole new ball game, even if L.A. doesn't win the World Series.

Bucking Authority

Behind any great innovation, there's an irritant. For better or worse, Manny does that well, too. He rejects authority and breaks the rules, like turning Joe Torre's haircut order into a playful negotiation. Of course, trying to get Manny to cut off his dreads is like telling Steve Jobs that the iPhone needs to have a keypad. It's precisely because innovators break the rules that their innovations lead to big leaps for society.

The key for corporate America is to embrace the irritant, while the challenge for innovators is to turn irritation into inspiration.

The Boston Red Sox traded Manny because they couldn't take his shenanigans anymore. Manny has said that he wanted to leave Boston because he was looking for "peace." Jeopardizing a $20 million annual paycheck just to find a little peace? How many of us would have taken that risk? Only the true innovators would dare, because innovators play fearlessly, as if they have nothing to lose.

But as it turns out, the risk has turned into reward for the player. Los Angeles is the perfect place for Manny. L.A. is fun-loving, quirky, and appreciative of the spirit of play. After all, this is the city that's fully embraced innovations from skateboarding to margaritas.

It's too early to tell Manny's long-term impact on Dodgers baseball. Certainly we can expect him to test everyone's patience from time to time. But so far he's helping unite this diverse and eclectic city behind a sports team in a way that we haven't been united in years.

And so, Manny, I toast your arrival in Los Angeles--with a margarita, of course.

This article originally appeared in Businessweek.

Krisztina "Z" Holly is the Vice Provost for Innovation at the University of Southern California and Executive Director for the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation. She was "traded" from Boston to L.A. two years ago.

Follow Krisztina Holly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/krisztinaholly

Comments

[wanked]

God I miss lookin at his picture in the New England papers......

WAAAAAAAAA­AAAAAAAAAA­AAAAAaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaa­aaaaaaaaaa­aa........­..........­..........­..........­.

[DeniseT]

Being a Red Sox fan, I loved Manny as much as anyone. Love like a mother still loves a son that can't stay out of jail. We just learned to ignore the bad things about Manny because it hurt to confront them.
But even that cannot last forever. Manny's obvious lack of effort he showed the Red Sox during his last month there just brought the other things out of the closet where the fans could not ignore them any longer.
Manny's hijinks may seem cute to LA now, but they will get old. There is the Manny that is easy to love and then there is the Manny who can't be bothered to visit our veterans at Walter Reed with the rest of the team. There is the Manny who does minimal charity work and has never gone back to visit his high school in the Bronx - where his coach still works and his picture hangs on the locker room wall. There is the Manny who pushes a 67 year old man to the ground becuase he couldn't get 16 tickets to a game.
As a Red Sox fan, I love Manny - always will. But I don't miss him a bit. Good Luck LA.

[jhNY]

Love Manny, especially in his role as burr under the saddle of mostly white sports columnists and other great moralists of games, who have much to say about a work ethic in the context of a sport that is played. He did well by Boston, but he didn't behave with sufficient gratitude to please the soreheads there, so they taught him a lesson. And now the Dodgers will go the playoffs, where with any luck, he will continue to flourish. Perhaps Boston, who he helped for the first half of the season, will meet L.A. in the World Series. That's when the real fun will begin.

[jimdarling]

At the 11th hour, when Manny was about to be traded, Scott Boras told the Red Sox management that if they just dropped their 2-year contract extension rights, Manny would play hard again. "Play hard again?" It was an implicit admission of what everyone strongly suspected: that Manny had been tanking the season in order to get out of his current contract. It was a slap in the face of his teammates, his manager, his fans.

We don't ask for gratitude. Ted Williams was about as ungrateful a player as you could get. We never minded that Manny didn't talk to the media. All we ask is that you try to the best of your abilities. Maybe in LA doing your job is the same thing as being grateful, but not here. Your insinuation that this is a sign of racial intolerence, that those white sportscasters and intolerant Bostonians taught that Dominican a lesson, is ridiculous. Next you'll be saying Damon got traded because management couldn't stand his slovenly hair.

[RedStateBlues]

I loved watching Manny play for the Red Sox, but he really broke my heart when he stopped trying to help the team win. And he wasn't "risking" a $20M paycheck. When he said "peace," he really meant a bigger "piece." He didn't want the Sox to pick up his option because he was thinking he could get more than the option price next year. I wish him every good thing.

[RobinSeattle]

After being traded to the Dodgers, Ramirez more or less admitted that he had deliberately tanked it in his last few weeks with Boston. Boy, I didn't know old fashioned jaking was so prized among certain members of the public.

No doubt Ramirez is headed for the Hall of Fame, but that is because he has one of the most authoritative insideout strokes in baseball and really works on his hitting everyday. There is nothing playful about Manny's pre-game routine.

The extra tickets sold in L.A. were because the Dodgers were floundering offensively and looked like they were going to allow Arizona to walk off with the Western Division title and Manny's acquisition gave them new hope. And the same thing would have happened had they gotten any other prominent power hitter.

As somebody who is kind of old school when it comes to baseball, I like watching Manny hit, but his often lackadaisical attitude drives me nuts. He frequently makes a joke of the game by acting unprofessionally. Not exactly the greatest role mode for kids, either.

[jimdarling]

I know it doesn't go along that well with the storyline of Manny-as-Maverick, but let's take some deep breaths and revisit why the Sox traded him. It wasn't because of his shenanigans, the high five, cell phone call in the monster, any of that stuff. It's because his intentional tanking and sense of entitlement were bad for the team. Manny's numbers for LA are where his numbers COULD have been this year in Boston, if he hadn't put getting out of his contract before playing for his team. There's no excuse for intentionally playing badly, and it's not something that management should ever overlook, no matter who does it. So to Manny I say thanks for the rings, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[RedStateBlues]

You're spot on!

[MichB1]

Exactly, exactly.

Manny is a lot of fun and for that, I miss him. At the same time, his behavior this year was unprovoked and asinine -- his agent Scott Boras represents everything that's wrong with the game, and Manny went along with it.

Here's the real reason he's gone:
-> Would Boras have made any money on the deal if Manny had stayed with Boston for 2 more years? NO.
-> Did Boras make any money on the deal with LA? YES.

He had to go.

Have fun while it lasts, LA. It won't.

[boston2008]

Manny Ramirez, the best right handed hitter EVER!!! in HISTORY!!!... who cares that he has long hair and wears a baggy uniform. Johnny Damon had long hair and a beard and Babe Ruth wore baggy pants, so there. So what that he use to spend time in the Green monster and use the bathroom, use the phone in between innings. AGAIN, MANNY GAVE US 2 WORLD SERIES. No one's perfect. .410 avg. 14 home runs. 40 rbi's. 50 hits and tons of fun in the club house and not to mention a 4 1/2 game lead over the arizona dimond backs. yeah, i'd take that guy any time in my team.